Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘Illyrian Polish’

This is another old one, I painted these back in the fall too! They were supposed to be wheat sheaves or something, but the look mostly floral-y and very sparkly. Honestly, I keep forgetting that I own this base polish and it is so darn stunning!

I have an intense love/hate relationship with glitters. On the one hand, they are beautiful, and most of them have this jelly depth that leaves me staring at my nails whenever I wear them. On the other hand, they are a pain to apply (since, lets be honest, you have to place a lot of the glitters, especially larger ones) and the are REALLY a pain to remove!

Eleven at least isn’t that hard to get on the nail, the glitters are well-dispersed, uniform in size, and smallish. But it costs so much time to take off!!

I love this manicure. It is incredibly simple (its just a stamp) but the COLORS. Also, the base is seriously one of my favorite polishes. I almost never reach for it, but whenever I wear it I have to question my sanity about wearing anything else!

There isn’t much to say about this. I actually wore it back in late Fall (hence the darker colors) but I don’t care. It is stunning. I want a dress that looks like Marrow Sea. To be fair, I remain obsessed with shimmery polishes, and this one has it in spades!

Unfortunately, I still haven’t replaced my gold stamping polish, so all of my more recent manicures that involve metallic stamps have featured the same rose gold that you can see here. I really need to buy a new gold! I suppose it makes sense, but the only colors I ever run out of are my basic stamping polishes (black, white, gold, silver) and nude cremes. I want to buy more crazy glitters, but I never use them up! Too bad 🙂

So, this was another difficult post to put together! I, again, bought ~50 polishes this year. There were some clear winners and losers, and a few that despite not being interesting have bottles that are almost half empty already! I tend to buy polishes that have been out for a while when my craving for them overwhelms my common sense, so most of these are not “new” this year, and a few (well, just one I think) are limited edition and cannot be purchased any longer (sorry!).

1. Eleven – Illyrian Polish
I cannot with this polish. I absolutely adore orange and red glitters in purple, and this is the first polish that I’ve owned that did it in a way which looked both elegant and fun. I don’t even care that it is top coat hungry.

2. Rosewater – ILNP
I only bought one of the silver-based shifty glitters from ILNP when they came out around a year ago, and it was Rosewater. This polish is a beautiful silver holographic glitter base with tons of pink shimmer. It looks, somehow, both delicate and blingy. I love it.

3. Shadow on the Moon – Emily de Molly
I somehow convinced myself that this polish is subtle and thus that I can wear it more frequently than the above two. I am lying to myself, but I love it so much that I cannot bring myself to care! This polish is a darkened purple-grey base with two sizes of holo glitter and pink shimmer. Actually, I am wearing this polish right now. It is really really pretty.

4. Cherish – Picture Polish
This is one of my polish bottles that is 1/2 empty already. Cherish is a slightly greyed nude/pink color with lots of holo shards (rather than just glitter). I like that the shards make the finish a bit more varied, and that this is still subtle enough to wear to work. I probably wore this on my nails for a good third of all my residency interviews! So, not super interesting, but definitely worth buying if you need subtle but want something fun still on your nails.

5. Memory Palace – Cadillacquer Polish
This is another of the sutble-yet-super-pretty family of polishes that is already half empty. Memory Palace is a teal-grey with golden flakes and subtle holo shimmer. I like that the color is both teal and grey but is pale enough to be wearable to work, but has the holo AND the gold to make it interesting! It also matches my hospital scrubs suspiciously well.

6. Million Dollar Dream – F.U.N. Lacquer
I bought two crazy holographic glitterbombs buy F.U.N., Million Dollar Dream (the gold) and 24 Karat Diamond (silver), but I’ve always liked gold polish better than silver polish for some reason, so I selected the gold to put on my top 10! Both of these polishes are crazy glittery nuts, and make me happy…although removal is a pain in the butt! Worth it.

7. Not Your Average Seahorse – Blush Lacquers
This is the polish that I know is no longer available, as it was part of the Polish Pickup Pack options from October! This polish is absolutely beautiful and colorful with a combination of holographic, multichrome, and shimmer. I think the trend this year is that I really like shimmer in my polish!

8. Pending Perfection – Emily de Molly
Another color with pink shimmer! Oh my gosh. Pending Perfection is a bright teal blue with the most amazing pink shimmer. It combines my favorite things: neon polish and shimmer. he polish is a little thick, but still easy to use. Whenever I want to use a super bright polish, this is where I turn!

9. Dove – ZoyaThis is the first of the creme polishes on this list, and is also already half empty. Dove is by no means a new polish, but I had been searing for a good medium grey, and found it! It is a great two-coat polish. Nothing super fancy, but if you need a grey (like I did), Dove is a great pick!

10. Playing Koi – Essie
The last of the creme polishes to make my top 10 is this dark burnt orange by essie. This is, unfortunately, not the best photo of this polish but oh well. I have a hard time convincing myself to buy oranges since I wear them so infrequently, but somehow ended up with 3 new ones this year! Of those three, this is by far my favorite. The polish only takes two thin coats, maybe only one if I was more careful, and is such an interesting color that it makes the list.

Honorable Mentions:

11. Crown of Thistles – A England
This polish simply glows. I own a number of purple holographic polishes, and this one really stands out for the care that Adina put into the color. It is basically a one-coater. I haven’t worn it as much as I should because I’ve been stuck wearing such boring polishes the last few months with interviews, but it is one that I am most looking forward to playing with this year!

12. Cheers to the Holidays (H) – F.U.N. Lacquer
Hilariously, this was the polish that convinced me to place an order for F.U.N. Lacquer polish when they went on sale, since I had seen soo many stunning photos of this multichrome with glitter and holo. In real life, the polish is quite pretty but not nearly as fantastic at the pictures would have me believe! Mostly because the multichrome is harder to see with all the glitter. I still love this polish and I am glad I bought it, and of the 7 (I think) multichromes that I bought this year, this was my favorite. That said, all of the above polishes were better! But, if you want something with a bit of wow and a cute name, here you go.

Hope you enjoyed! I can’t wait to search everyone else’s blogs and see what polishes I missed this year that I just need to pick up!